And so it begins
If you read the story, it’s a link to a left leaning blog that suggests that Hillary stole the New Hampshire primary from Obama by defrauding the Diebold machines. Let me get this out of the way right up front: Those machines need to be done away with (or modified to give a paper trail) across the board. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who wasn’t a Diebold salesman who didn’t agree with that. No, aside from that, this raises several questions with me:
#1. Is this now the way elections are going to go? If your candidate doesn’t win a close race, or loses when he had been projected to win, are the cries “The other guy cheeted” going to ring out across the land? How depressing.
#2. This time it’s Democrat versus Democrat. Right now it’s just a rumbling across the blogsphere, but if this grows into a big story with accusations and counter accusations flying from the camp of one front runner to another, will that have a negative effect on the chances of a Democrat winning in the fall? I can see two ways that this might happen: #1, Such sure to be bitter political infighting leaves undecided voters with a bad taste in their mouth, turning them away from whoever the Democratic nominee is in the general election, or #2, what I call The Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome. Real Republican voter fraud happens in the general election (and I know that there are those of you who believe that 'Pubbies cheat as a matter of course. I’ve haven’t seen proof of that yet, but for those of you who do believe that, this is a very bad scenario indeed) and complaints from the Democrats get dismissed by the general public as “What garbage, they’ve been saying that about every election since January”.
Damn, it truncated my thread title. Heh, good thing I didn’t try to use the quote about the first horse, the one that is generally regarded as the Antichrist or “Conquest”, symbolizing a non-violent rise to power. It would be more appropriate considering the thread subject, buy John didn’t see fit to tell his story in an easily identifiable sound bite.
Possible, I suppose. But it seems just as possible, if not more likely, that the polls were poorly taken and so were slanted a particular way, that the “crying” thing shifted a decent portion of people to her side, or that when it actually came to voting time, more people thought she was more electable than Obama even if they liked him better. Possibly all three.
The suspicions are not that Hillary was behind it but that the Republicans (who control Diebold) fear Obama more in a general election than Hillary. I wish I could dismiss it a a crazy theory but there’s too much smoke around these fucking machines to say there’s no fire.
From everything I know, the GOP thinks that they have either of those two beat, and would much more prefer them to candidates like Edwards or Richardson (though he bailed.) Personally, I’d guess that she has the greater ability to win the presidential election of the two since she’s more centrist and it’s the swing voters you need to pull in during the next election since no democrat is going to even consider switching sides regardless of whether they dislike their candidate or not.
Even though Hillary is further to the center than Obama, she seems to be more hated by conservatives. I think unconcious sexism has a lot to do with it. But nonetheless, Hillary Haters will turn up in droves and might counteract her appeal to centrists. Obama is probably a safer bet in the general election.
The Bush vs. Gore and Bush vs. Kerry elections seemed to fairly well proove that when no one likes either candidate you’re going to get darn close to 50-50% vote for either side, which fairly well shows that the number of liberals and the number of conservatives is, essentially, equal. The dual party system and evolutionary processes have created equally balanced central beliefs for each group in terms of voter base.
Assuming that 40% of the population is liberal and 40% conservative, and liberals will all vote for the party and so will all the conservatives, that still doesn’t hurt you any if the remaining 20% swing your way. Trying to win the other side over is stupid when you’re coming into a year where everyone is going to really be out voting their party no matter what. Bush really polarised politics over the last eight years.
And remember that Obama is black, muslim (sworn in on the Koran), his name contains Hussein and is one letter off from a mass murderer of particular note, and is more liberal than his competitor. All Hillary has to get over, in the eyes of the centrists, is that she didn’t get a divorce when her husband had an affair.
Interesting controversy. Those machines replaced the reliable punch cards in Ohio, which already provided a paper trail. The same people who were hysterical about getting rid of the punch cards want to get rid of the new machines. They want a piece of paper that people can point to and fill in with a marking device (thus providing a hard copy of the transaction). This is what we had before with the reliable punch cards. I hope they didn’t throw the old machines out. Maybe we can get them back. They were so simple to use.
Missed edit window: Obama also has no experience or track record. Before running for President, Hillary and Schwarzeneggar were the two people you heard about as actually being out doing stuff in their new positions for their constituency.
Obama is a not a Muslim any longer. He is a Christian. He was not sworn in on the Koran. The only federal elected official I am aware of that was sworn in on the Koran was Keith Ellison of Minnesota’s 5th district.
Can I just say that I hate the wankers who cry “Fraud!” when their candidate of choice loses? In this case, it’s especially stupid because it’s far from certain who the Democratic nominee will be at this point. I’ve heard claims that the polling stopped the day before the NH primary, and that this is why the predictions of an Obama sweep were wrong. This is a non-issue and should really just be allowed to die quietly, as it solves nothing. I mean, let’s face it, if Karl Rove suddenly confessed that he somehow knew ahead of time that the 2000 election would hinge on Florida (and I’d like to point out that had Gore won his home state of TN, Florida would have meant diddly if it went for Bush) and he rigged the election there so Bush would win, what would it change, exactly? 9/11 still would have happened, and we’d still be in Iraq. Yeah, Bush & Co. might get some jail time, but are you willing to bet the farm on that? It seems more likely that someone would wind up taking the fall like Scooter did and that the next President would pardon Bush “for the good of the country.” :rolleyes:
It’s not just embittered Democrat boosters whose candidate lost; it’s in the Republican interest to help along any rumour that suggest a Dem candidate (any of them) used fraud of some kind, because it calls into question the validity of the eventual nomination. In fact, if the Dem race is a close Clinton/Obama match right to the convention, that’s gold because whoever wins can be smeared as benefiting from subtle chicanery. If the Repubs pick their man early on, he can go right to the debates talking about how his support is untainted by even the appearance of impropriety.
The wankers are useful idiots doing exactly what the Republicans want.
Those weren’t based on exit polls. Exit ppolls are extremely accurate. Exit polls are how we monitor the legitimacy of elections of other countries. Dick Morris, who has been an official observer of some South American elections and who is an expert on the matter, said that he had never seen an exit poll get it wrong before Diebold. We know for a fact that the diebold machines are hackable and unreliable. We know for a fact that the company is owned an controlled by partisan Republicans. We know for a fact that the GOP refuses to allow paper trails or any means to verify the numbers.
I’ve never bought into any conspiracy in my life Diebold makes me wonder a lot.
